Aug 12 2011

Should Congress and the President be able to force you to buy anything, with penalties and fines if you don’t?

Category: Uncategorizedharmonicminer @ 1:06 pm

Yet another appeals court has declared that the government can’t force you to purchase health insurance, asAppeals court rules against Obama healthcare mandate. However, one judge disagreed:

 

The Obama administration did win some support from the appeals court for the individual mandate. One of the three judges, Stanley Marcus, dissented from the majority opinion.

The majority “has ignored the undeniable fact that Congress’ commerce power has grown exponentially over the past two centuries and is now generally accepted as having afforded Congress the authority to create rules regulating large areas of our national economy,” wrote Marcus, also a Clinton appointee to the appeals court.

 Translation: since Congress has usurped the power of the states and of individuals so effectively in the past, there is now no reason not to let Congress just do anything it wants. Anything at all, it seems.

16 Responses to “Should Congress and the President be able to force you to buy anything, with penalties and fines if you don’t?”

  1. dave says:

    Yet another appeals court has declared that the government can’t force you to purchase health insurance

    And by “yet another appeals court” you mean “one appeals court” as the only other appeals court that has ruled on this said that it WAS constitutional. But hey, lets not let facts get in the way.

  2. harmonicminer says:

    Hi Dave, welcome back.

    Perhaps I am incorrect, but I thought one of the previous courts that ruled against the mandate was an appeals court. Are you sure that’s not the case? I didn’t go back and look it up…. so for now, strike the word “appeals”, if that makes you more able to get the main point, which is, can anyone state ANY kind of financial requirement, or required purchase, or regulation, that this expanded vision of the Commerce Clause would not allow?

    This kind of thing is like the so-called “right to privacy” that’s not really in the Constitution, or there could never have been laws against personally using drugs, or viewing child-porn, or a thousand more unsavory things…. in fact, Congress would have no right to try to force me to report income it doesn’t already know about.

    This kind of “interpretation” of the commerce clause essentially means “the law is whatever we say it is” and “the constitution lets us do pretty much anything to you we want”, if it’s allowed to stand.

    No credible historian makes the claim that the creators OF the commerce clause ever thought it could be extended in the farcical ways that it has.

    And the judge I quoted doesn’t care. He doesn’t care what the Constitution meant to the people who wrote it and adopted it, and passed it on to us. He only cares about increasing the power and reach of government.

  3. dave says:

    Perhaps I am incorrect, but I thought one of the previous courts that ruled against the mandate was an appeals court.

    You are incorrect. The article that you linked to talks about where things stand in the different appeals courts. One appeals court (2-1) said it is constitutional. One appeals court (1-2) says it isn’t constitutional.

    He doesn’t care what the Constitution meant to the people who wrote it and adopted it, and passed it on to us. He only cares about increasing the power and reach of government.

    Ha! If you say so. I guess the very conservative judge on the 6th circuit that said it WAS constitutional only wants to increase the power and reach of government as well.

    There are decades of judicial precedent on the side of allowing this.

  4. dave says:

    By the way… Marcus is a Clinton appointee, but is a Republican and was a Reagan appointee before being a Clinton appointee.

  5. harmonicminer says:

    Yes, there are decades of judicial precedent allowing the increase of congressional power, which in the end has meant an increase also in judicial power. Things really went wrong at Marbury vs. Madison…. but that’s another story. I’ll say this: the founders expected ALL branches of government to restrain THEMSELVES and their actions by constitutional considerations. The courts were not intended to be the sole interpreters of it, but rather to judge application to individual cases.

    Labels like “conservative” or “liberal” and who appointed whom don’t matter much to me…. the proof is in the deeds and decisions. I don’t like judges who essentially make it up as they go along, merely because they were appointed by a “conservative” president.

    I applaud careful, rational, originalist thinking, whoever is doing it.

    Can you name a regulation or financial requirement that couldn’t be seen as allowable under the “modern” interpretation of the commerce clause? Could the government require that all loudspeakers must be painted blue? Could it require that three witnesses must observe all chiropractic procedures? Could it require that only cars weighing less than 1000 pounds can be allowed on the road? Could it require that clothing must be designed to self-destruct within one year, in order to stimulate people to buy more new clothing?

    Offhand, these are all allowable (and worse, far worse) under the notion that Congress can make anybody do anything or spend anything in order to do anything or spend anything. Read it again: it makes sense. It is the current case.

  6. dave says:

    Its seriously difficult to take you seriously and give you any credibility when you don’t know some of the basic facts about where things stand.

  7. harmonicminer says:

    It’s OK Dave, my day isn’t destroyed because I used the word “appeals” in the wrong place, if I did…. concerning which fact I don’t care much, or at least not enough to go find out if you’re correct, because (are you listening, Dave?) it has no bearing on the main point of the post. It’s as if I called a Ford a Chevy by accident (or genuine error) while discussing whether or not American’s driving cars is a danger to the planet’s eco-system. Do you see that the error isn’t relevant to the point, so it doesn’t really matter?

    Except, of course, to people who are looking for minor errors, to TRY to discredit a point because they have no other argument that has any weight. Most folks see through that sort of thing.

    (yawn)

  8. dave says:

    Look – I’m not interested in arguing the commerce clause with you, because we are never going to agree. I’ll take the side of decades of judicial precedent. You’ll take the side of what you think the original intent of the language was.

    But you refusal to admit that you are wrong in your post, and your refusal to change it, is odd. Seems like you would rather make some political point then be accurate. And you clearly thought that it was relevant that “yet another appeals court” ruled has ruled it unconstitutional. It is a basic fact that you are blatantly lying about in order to give the impression that this is clearly unconstitutional.

  9. harmonicminer says:

    (sigh) Dave, I’m not “lying” because I refuse to accept YOU as the final authority, and because I’m too lazy to research a peripheral issue to my main point, which is about the Commerce Clause’s apparently infinite reach.

    Here is a website that appears to gather all the information in one place: http://healthcarelawsuits.org/blog/

    THEY say, and I believe them, that this was the first “appellate” level ruling against Obamacare.

    You want to be careful about calling someone a “liar” who has already said they relied on memory, and just don’t happen to be willing to accept YOUR statement just because you made it. If you cared so much about this side point, you could easily have provided a link in a comment to settle the matter conclusively, then moved on to the main point of the post. Instead, you prefer invective.

    Oy vey.

    So…. you say “we’ll never agree” about the commerce clause’s current “meaning” and what it should be. You like the decades of legislative and judicial over-reach, because, of course, it suits your liberal/left politics to favor the extension of government power into nearly any venue of the life of citizens.

    Do you contend that the original framers intended the applications of the commerce clause that have been made in the last 60 years? If so, on what grounds? If not, on what grounds do you think it doesn’t MATTER what the framers intended? If you think it doesn’t matter what the framers intended, on what grounds, save pure, bare-knuckle majority politics, do you think the Congress can EVER be limited in its reach into what we buy, how we buy it, who we can buy it from, how we have to pay for it, under what conditions it can be made and sold, under what conditions we can use it, etc.? Is ANYTHING fair game to the latest political winds? Or do you see ANY limits to Congressional power, to, say, determine the fabric options of your boxer shorts (and the color too, for that matter)? Can you name any example of anything in the categories just listed that would clearly be unconstitutional?

    I will take failure to answer these questions *directly* as an unqualified NO, that you think Congress can do anything it wants in these areas (which is, to say, nearly all of life insofar as it involves any kind of interchange with other human beings).

    Hopefully the 2012 elections can at least slow the arrival of the Brave New World you so earnestly desire.

  10. dave says:

    You want to be careful about calling someone a “liar” who has already said they relied on memory,

    Okay… how about I say you are blatantly wrong in your post, and now that you know you are wrong, and still keep it up in your post, you are now lying. Better?

    Hopefully the 2012 elections can at least slow the arrival of the Brave New World you so earnestly desire.

    Hyperbole much?

  11. harmonicminer says:

    But Dave, if I delete the one word “appeals” from the post, none of your brilliant exposure of me as a vicious prevaricator will make any sense. This way, readers will know of your noble defense of truth, justice, and the, uh, statist way.

    Btw, I accept your surrender on the constitutional issue.

    Sent via Blackberry

  12. dave says:

    <blockquote?Btw, I accept your surrender on the constitutional issue.Thats funny, because I haven’t discussed the constitutional issue.

    And I have no idea why you are so willing to be blatantly wrong in your post. You are entitled to you own opinions, but not your own facts.

  13. harmonicminer says:

    Yes, Dave, it’s true: you haven’t come anyway near discussing the main point of the post. For the record: read up at comment #2 in this thread. Do you see where I said, “For now, strike the word appeals.”? That was me giving you your point, way back then, so we could discuss the main issue of the post. That was my acknowledgment that I had gone by my (at that time I didn’t know different) possibly flawed memory (because I don’t believe things just because you assert them). Later, I actually posted in this thread the link proving you were right.

    How does this equate to “liar”?

    In fact, if I now go back and edit the post, and therefore remove all of this (now irrelevant) commentary, which would then make no sense, you would accuse me of “hiding my lies,” I suppose.

    Honestly, I continue the conversation with you on this level because you so perfectly illustrate the loony left (“Bush lied, people died”) and progressive left reluctance to actually debate real issues (like Al Gore refusing to debate so called “climate skeptics” because he knows he’ll look the fool when it’s over) based on real facts that are relevant to the topic at hand.

    You don’t want to have the discussion I invited you to enter in this paragraph, because you know there are no good answers to the questions I ask, and because you know they’ll unmask you (if you’re even hiding) as a person who does not think the Constitution is worth the paper it’s printed on. But I’ll try again:

    Do you contend that the original framers intended the applications of the commerce clause that have been made in the last 60 years? If so, on what grounds? If not, on what grounds do you think it doesn’t MATTER what the framers intended? If you think it doesn’t matter what the framers intended, on what grounds, save pure, bare-knuckle majority politics, do you think the Congress can EVER be limited in its reach into what we buy, how we buy it, who we can buy it from, how we have to pay for it, under what conditions it can be made and sold, under what conditions we can use it, etc.? Is ANYTHING fair game to the latest political winds? Or do you see ANY limits to Congressional power, to, say, determine the fabric options of your boxer shorts (and the color too, for that matter)? Can you name any example of anything in the categories just listed that would clearly be unconstitutional?

  14. dave says:

    Later, I actually posted in this thread the link proving you were right.

    LOL. Yet you have stated numerous times in the comments things like “If I was wrong” or “If” I wrote it wrong or “possibly flawed.”

    In fact, if I now go back and edit the post, and therefore remove all of this (now irrelevant) commentary, which would then make no sense, you would accuse me of “hiding my lies,” I suppose.

    Most decent bloggers, after realizing they are wrong, would edit the post and make it clear that it was edited. Not difficult to do. But go ahead and keep giving the impression that there are numerous appeals court rulings against the health insurance mandate. I see how interested you are in telling the truth rather than pushing your agenda.

    You don’t want to have the discussion I invited you to enter in this paragraph, because you know there are no good answers to the questions I ask

    Wrong. I don’t want to have the discussion because you and I have opposing views on this issue and on the constitution, and I see no point in arguing about something where we won’t convince each other.

    I DID think you would be interested in actually being truthful. I guess I was wrong.

  15. harmonicminer says:

    Dave, I’m just curious. Why, since “you and I have opposing views… on the constitution” and you “see no point in arguing”, etc., do you bother to post comments merely making personal digs over (honestly) trivialities?

    Is your life so empty? Do I go to your site and latch onto some minor inaccuracy that doesn’t affect the point you’re making, and comment 7 times or so about it? Do you honestly think I couldn’t find such, if I bothered to look? (I don’t.)

    I still think you have no good answers to my questions on the Constitution, the Framers’ intent, and the people’s will in ratifying the document.

    I think this is boring, so I’m done with the thread. Go ahead. Call me a liar again, if it makes you feel like you “won”. I won’t reply.

    Unless you say something interesting on the topic.

  16. dave says:

    do you bother to post comments merely making personal digs over (honestly) trivialities?

    I pointed out a lie that you still haven’t corrected. That isn’t a personal dig. It is a fact.

    Is your life so empty?

    LOL. What was that you said about personal digs?

    Do you honestly think I couldn’t find such, if I bothered to look?

    You might be able to, but I guarantee you that I would have the integrity to fix it. It HAS happened before, and when I find out I post something that is blatantly false, I correct it.

Leave a Reply